THE    GIRL   THAT 
DISAPPEARS 

The   Real   Facts    About 
The  White  Slave  Traffic 


BY 


GEN.  THEODORE  A.  BINGHAM 

|q 

Former  Police   Commissioner  for  Greater  New   York 


RICHARD  G.,  BADGER 

THE  CORHAM  PRtSS 
I9II 


Copyright,  1911,  by  Richard  G.  Badger. 


All  Rights  Reserved. 


THE  GORHAM  PRESS,  BOSTON,  U.  S.  A. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

/     Nameless  and  Unknown 7 

//     Where  Do   the   "Lost*    Girls 

Go? 10 

///     "White  Slavery"  is  Only  a  Part     14 

"IV  Why  the  Grand  Jury's  Investi- 
gation Was  Apparently  a 
Failure  22 

V     Girls  at  $60  and  $75  Each.  .      29 

/W     How  White  Slave    Traffic  is 

Carried  on 32 

VII  Now  Man's  Business,  Not  Wo- 
man's    37 

Fill     A    Typical  "Cadet"  History.      39 

IX     Boy    and    Girl    Members    of 
*•         Gang    41 

X     Other  Instances  of  Cadet  Work     45 

XI     System    Employed    to    Make 

Women  Immoral   50 

XII  Some  Recruited  Through  Al- 
leged Employment  Agencies  55 


221683 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

XIII  Working  Among  School  Chil- 

dren          57 

XIV  Dangerous  Darkness  in  Mov- 

ing Picture  Shows 59 

XV     The  Position  of  the  Protector     61 
XVI     Remedies   that  are  Possible.  .      66 

XVII  Mayor  "Golden  Rule"  Jones 
Solved  the  Problem  by  Seg- 
regation    68 

XVIII     Supporting  Cities  by  Levying 

Tribute  on  Fallen  Women.      73 

XIX  Little  Use  for  the  One  Ration- 
al Institution  for  Fallen  Wo- 
men    78 

XX     The  Solution  of  the  Problem     82 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 


THE  GIRL 
THAT   DISAPPEARS 

i 

NAMELESS  AND  UNKNOWN 

DURING    my   three    and    a    half 
years  as  Commissioner  of  Police 
of  Greater  New  York,  no  experi- 
ence   affected    me    more    than    an    incident 
which    in    itself    was    considered    worth    no 
more  than  a   paragraph  in  the  newspapers. 
Identically  the  same  incident  has  happened 
in  a  dozen  cities,  allowing,  of  course,  for  var- 
iation in  details. 

It  was  at  the  hour  when  the  city  was  on 
its  way  home  from  work.  Crowds  of  men 
and  girls  filled  the  sidewalks  and  overflowed 
the  streets.  The  trolley  cars  clanged  their 
way  slowly,  drivers  of  drays  and  wagons 
7 


:  •*' :  VHE  -Gi  fk;  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

kept  up  a  chorus  of  warning  shouts  as  they 
threaded  their  horses  in  and  out  the  proces- 
sion. Even  with  all  the  care  that  drivers  and 
motormen  can  exert,  accidents  happen.  On 
this  particular  day  a  girl  darted  in  front  of 
a  trolley  car.  She  was  ground  under  the 
wheels.  Muscular  arms  lifted  the  heavy 
trucks.  Some  one  sent  in  a  call  for  an  ambu- 
lance, but  before  its  gong  was  heard  in  the 
distance  the  girl  was  dead. 

As  a  rule  it  is  not  impossible  to  identify 
almost  at  once,  even  an  obscure  girl  thus 
suddenly  cut  off,  but  in  this  case  search  of 
the  girl's  body  revealed  not  one  single  clue 
to  her  identity.  She  was  literally  nameless 
and  unknown. 

The  body  was  removed  to  the  morgue  and 
an  appeal  sent  to  the  newspapers  in  the  hope 
of  identification.  And  the  most  terribly  sad 
feature  of  the  tragedy  was  the  number  of 
men  and  women  who  flocked  to  the  morgue 
— fathers  and  mothers  and  relatives  of  girls 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

who  had  "disappeared."  They  had  read  in 
the  newspapers  of  the  accident,  and  despite 
disparities  in  the  printed  description  and  the 
appearance  of  their  own  lost  one,  they  came 
to  the  morgue  in  the  fearful  hope  of  finding 


II 

WHERE  DO  THE   "LOST"  GIRLS  GO? 


I 


story  is  one  of  many  that 
could  be  told  to  illustrate  the  sin- 
ister fact  that  every  year  thou- 
sands of  young  girls  disappear  from  their 
homes  in  the  cities  or  go  from  the  small 
towns  to  the  cities  and  drop  out  forever  from 
all  knowledge  of  their  families.  What  be- 
comes of  them?  Where  do  they  go?  Why 
do  they  go  ?  Into  whose  hands  do  they  fall  ? 
Some  of  them  go  down  to  nameless  graves, 
but  more  go  to  a  fate  infinitely  worse.  What 
that  fate  is  we  all  know,  in  a  vague  way  at 
least;  but,  unfortunately,  few  of  us  are  will- 
ing to  realize  that  the  thing  is  of  any  real 
concern  to  us  personally.  Not  because  we 
are  heartless  or  cold  or  selfish  do  we  Ameri- 
cans ignore  the  fact  that  we  have  a  terrible 
10 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

social  problem  at  our  doors.  No;  our  un- 
willingness to  look  the  facts  squarely  in  the 
face  is  due  solely  to  inherited  Puritanism. 
We  have  allowed  ourselves  to  become  con- 
vinced that  we  are  morally  superior  to  the 
people  of  Europe.  Our  belief  in  our  super- 
ior purity  is  founded  on  ignorance  or  hypoc- 
risy. We  have  made  laws  saying  that  the  so- 
cial evil  shall  not  exist.  Then  we  thoroughly 
blindfold  ourselves  and  raise  our  hands  in 
horror  at  any  mention  of  the  subject. 

The  plain,  shocking  facts  are  that  this 
American  attitude  encourages  the  growth 
and  spread  of  vice.  It  makes  it  possible  for 
a  girl  to  disappear  from  your  town,  from 
your  own  neighborhood,  and  be  drawn  into 
the  net  of  the  underworld.  And  until  we 
overcome  our  timidity — and  hypocrisy — and 
go  after  the  situation  frankly,  vigorously,  and 
openly,  the  social  evil  will  continue  to  grow. 
It  thrives  on  secrecy  and  hypocrisy. 

It  is  time  to  discuss  the  whole  question  of 
ii 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

our  social  demoralization  without  sensation- 
alism or  prejudice.  It  is  time  to  take  stock 
of  the  situation.  We  should  get  all  the  avail- 
able data  on  the  subject,  consider  it  dispas- 
sionately, just  as  we  would  any  other  prob- 
lem that  affects  our  national  life,  see  just 
what  can  be  done  in  the  way  of  a  remedy, 
and  then  set  about  putting  this  remedy  into 
effect. 

I  am  willing  to  do  my  part  by  showing  you 
the  under-world  as  it  is  revealed  to  a  chief 
of  a  police  department  in  a  great  city.  You 
must  do  your  part  by  resolving  to  abandon 
timidity  and  hypocrisy.  Do  not  hesitate  to 
talk  openly  and  frankly  of  the  social  evil  in 
your  town.  Drive  the  facts  out  into  the 
open,  where  every  one  must  see  them.  If 
any  considerable  proportion  of  our  citizens 
would  do  this  for  a  year  or  two  we  would 
soon  have  this  horrible  problem  under  con- 
trol at  least. 

So  far  as  "white  slavery"  is  concerned,  if 
12 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

our  people  could  know  the  facts,  and  could 
become  convinced  that  such  a  thing  exists 
they  would  rise  up  in  fearful  indignation  and 
wipe  it  clean  away  from  civilization. 


Ill 


"WHITE  SLAVERY"  is  ONLY  A  PART 


WITHIN  the  last  two  years  the 
world  has  heard  a  great  deal  of 
of  what  is  called  the  white  slave 
traffic,  so  much,  indeed  that  the  average  read- 
er probably  believes  that  the  white  slave  traf- 
fic is  all  there  is  to  our  social  problem..  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  it  is  only  a  part  of  it.  The 
trouble  is  the  public  does  not  know  the  facts. 
What  it  has  been  given  is  a  mass  of  unrelated 
and,  for  the  most  part,  misunderstood  or  mis- 
interpreted statements. 

On  the  one  hand  the  public  has  been  told 
that  there  exists  a  regularly  organized  and 
incorporated  body  of  men  who  live  by  en- 
slaving women,  that  this  body  exists  on  an  in- 
ternational scale,  and  that  women  are 
shipped  like  cattle  from  one  side  of  the  ocean 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

to  the  other.  On  the  other  hand  the  public 
is  assured  that  no  such  organization  is  in  ex- 
istence. 

In  the  minds  of  one  part  of  the  public 
every  woman  of  the  under-world  is  a  "white 
slave. "  Another  half  of  the  population 
scouts  the  idea  that  any  woman  is  a  white 
slave,  and  there  we  are. 

The  fact  is  that  the  social  problem  is  a 
great  deal  wider  and  deeper  than  the  pub- 
lished statements  about  the  white  slave  traf- 
fic give  any  indication.  But  first  let  us  take 
up  and  dispose  of  this  particular  phase  of  the 
social  evil. 

There  is  absolutely  no  question  of  the  ex- 
istence to  an  appalling  extent  of  women  who 
are  veritable  white  slaves.  At  least  2,000 
of  them  are  brought  into  the  country  every 
year;  brought  in  like  cattle,  used  far  worse 
than  cattle,  and  disposed  of  for  money  like 
cattle.  They  are  enticed  from  their  homes 
by  deceit,  by  promises  of  big  pay  for  easy 
15 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

work  in  the  United  States,  the  land  of  gold. 
Generally  the  picture  of  what  they  are  to 
find  in  this  country  is  painted  by  one  of  their 
own  countrymen,  a  man  who  has  been  in 
the  United  States  and  has  returned  for  the 
fixed  purpose  of  finding  girls  to  take  back 
with  him.  They  do  not  know  his  real  pur- 
pose until  they  are  far  from  home.  My  ob- 
servation and  the  police  records  convince  me 
that  fully  ninety-five  per  cent,  of  all  the  so- 
called  white  slaves  are  foreigners,  principally 
girls  from  France,  Italy,  Germany  and  Hun- 
gary. Very  few  of  them  understand  English 
at  all.  This  is  necessarily  so.  It  is  part  of 
the  system  to  keep  them  ignorant  of  the  lan- 
guage, ignorant  of  American  customs,  ignor- 
ant of  their  rights  under  American  law. 
Otherwise,  their  masters  would  have  diffi- 
culty in  keeping  them  under  subjection. 

This  does  not  mean,  by  any  means,  that 
girls  from  our  own  country — especially  girls 
from  small  towns — are  not  drawn  into  the 
16 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

underworld  by  processes  of  deception  prac-  ' 
tically  identical  to  those  used  in  Europe. 
Far  from  it.  Time  after  time  I  have  found 
where  some  scoundrel  has  lured  a  girl  from 
home  by  promises  or  even  by  mock  mar- 
riage and  sold  her  or  left  her  to  the  under- 
world. But  she  does  not  become  a  white 
slave.  This  distinction  is  rather  difficult  to 
grasp,  but  there  is  a  distinction.  The  white 
slave,  as  we  use  the  term  in  the  police  busi- 
ness, is  a  woman  whose  earnings  are  col- 
lected by  a  man.  Why,  you  ask,  would  any 
woman  permit  that;  why  would  not  she  ap- 
peal to  the  nearest  policeman  rather  than 
live  the  life  she  lives  and  get  in  return  the 
pittance  her  master  allows  her?  A  girl  used 
to  the  ways  of  the  United  States  will  not  sub- 
mit for  long;  but  a  girl  in  a  strange  land, 
among  strange  people,  can  be  cowed  into 
doing  so.  Appeal  to  the  police?  Why,  she 
has  been  terrorized  into  believing  they  would 
send  her  to  prison  if  it  were  not  for  her  mas- 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

ter.  That  is  why  it  is  easier  for  a  white 
slaver,  when  his  victim  dies — and  the  aver- 
age life  of  a  woman  in  the  underworld  scarce- 
ly exceeds  five  years — to  go  to  Europe  and 
bring  a  new  victim  from  there.  Easier  and 
cheaper,  he  figures,  in  the  long  run. 

As  far  back  as  1902  the  governments  of 
Europe  were  well  aware  that  there  was  such 
a  thing  as  an  international  traffic  in  women. 
In  July,  1902,  delegates  from  various  pow- 
ers met  in  Paris  and  completed  a  project  of 
arrangement  for  the  suppression  of  white 
slave  traffic.  Within  two  years  the  stipula- 
tions of  this  project  were  signed  by  the  gov- 
ernments of  every  European  state.  The 
Government  of  the  United  States  was  the 
last  to  sign,  and  was  the  last  to  bring  itself 
to  take  any  action.  By  an  act  of  Congress 
of  the  United  States  in  February,  1907,  there 
was  created  a  Congressional  Immigration 
Commission  to  inquire  into  the  traffic.  Un- 
fortunately the  appropriation  made  was  not 
18 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

large  enough  to  enable  the  work  of  the  com- 
mission to  be  especially  valuable. 

The  white  slave  agitation  reached  a  high 
point  in  1908  and  1909.  Various  organiza- 
tions and  individuals  became  interested  in 
investigations;  newspapers  and  magazines 
took  up  the  subject,  and  during  the  New 
York  municipal  campaign  in  the  fall  of  1909, 
one  of  the  chief  arguments  used  against  Tam- 
many Hall  was  the  charge  that  white  slavery 
had  flourished  in  New  York  City  under  Tam- 
many administrations. 

Tammany,  consequently,  suffered  severely 
in  the  1909  election.  The  white  slave  charges 
got  beneath  the  skin  of  the  men  who  rule 
this  powerful  political  organization.  Before 
long  the  newspapers  announced  that  a  special 
grand  jury  would  be  appointed  to  investigate 
white  slavery.  It  was  obvious  that  some- 
thing had  to  be  done  to  "cleanse  the  fair 
name  of  our  city,"  and  incidentally  to  put 
Tammany  back  into  some  kind  of  dignity. 
19 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

The  powers,  which  had  persistently  and  con- 
sistently fought  every  moment,  every  piece 
of  legislation  which  looked  to  the  protection 
of  women  and  girls,  now  announced,  through 
a  Tammany  judge,  a  special  grand  jury  to 
make  a  thorough  inquiry  into  the  white  slave 
traffic  in  New  York  City. 

The  grand  jury  began  its  labors  January 
3,  1910.  John  D.  Rockefeller,  Jr.,  at  first 
reluctant  to  assume  the  duties  of  foreman  of 
the  jury,  finally  accepted  his  responsibilities 
with  earnestness  and  sincerity.  Learning 
that  the  District  Attorney's  office  was  short 
of  funds,  Mr.  Rockefeller  offered  the  sum 
of  $20,000  for  purposes  of  investigation. 
This  offer  was  declined  by  the  Mayor,  and 
the  Board  of  Estimates  made  a  special  ap- 
propriation of  $20,000  for  the  use  of  the 
District  Attorney. 

Of  course  none  of  these  things  was  accom- 
plished in  silence.  In  fact,  had  the  inquiry 
been  instituted  by  friends  and  near  relatives 
20 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

of  the  traffickers  in  women's  shame,  these 
men  could  not  have  been  more  effectually 
placed  upon  their  guard.  They  were  fairly 
megaphoned  that  they  were  in  immediate 
danger  of  apprehension.  Every  edition  of 
the  daily  papers  shouted  threats  and  warn- 
ings of  what  the  special  grand  jury  was 
about  to  do. 

Charles  S.  Whitman,  who  had  been  elect- 
ed District  Attorney  on  an  anti-Tammany 
ticket,  and  his  assistants  manifestly  were 
working  under  extremely  difficult  conditions. 
White  slavers  carry  on  their  business  so 
quietly  and  shrewdly  that  detection  and  con- 
viction is  almost  impossible  even  under  the 
most  favorable  conditions.  With  all  the 
newspapers  trumpeting  the  danger,  the  white 
slave  forces  made  themselves  most  incon- 
spicuous and  careful. 


21 


IV 


WHY  THE  GRAND  JURY'S  INVESTIGATION  WAS 
APPARENTLY  A   FAILURE 


I 


work  of  the  Rockefeller  grand 
jury  was  in  charge  of  Judge  T.  C. 
O'Sullivan,  of  the  .General  Ses- 
sions Court.  Judge  O'Sullivan  was  elected 
to  his  position  in  1905  on  a  Tammany  ticket. 
Before  that  time  he  had  been  in  turn  counsel 
for  the  contracting  company  of  Charles  F. 
Murphy,  leader  of  Tammany  Hall,  a  State 
Senator,  a  Tammany  Assemblyman  and  an 
active  Tammany  worker  for  years. 

The  grand  jury's  work  dragged  on 
through  the  winter  and  spring.  Through- 
out Judge  O'Sullivan  insisted  that  the  only 
point  at  issue  was  whether  there  existed  a 
formal  organized  corporate  body  of  men 
who  were  associated  in  the  business  of  traf- 
22 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

ficking  in  women.  It  had  to  be  a  formal  or- 
ganization, not  an  informal  one;  the  kind 
that  could  be  got  at  with  indictments,  or 
Judge  O'Sullivan  would  have  none  of  it. 

Eventually  an  effort  was  made  to  offer  a 
presentment  of  the  jury's  findings  so  that 
the  jury  might  be  dismissed.  Judge  O'Sul- 
livan  refused  to  receive  the  presentment  and 
relieve  the  jury  of  its  responsibilities.  "I 
will  receive  nothing  but  indictments/'  was 
his  answer  to  Mr.  Rockefeller. 

Some  weeks  later  he  did  receive  the  pre- 
sentment, read  it,  and  dismissed  the  jury  with 
these  words: 

"Your  answer  to  the  main  question  sub- 
mitted to  you  is  a  merited  rebuke  to  the 
slanderers  of  the  cleanest  and  greatest  city  in 
the  world. " 

Grand  jury  presentments  are  given  to  the 
press  only  after  they  have  been  filed.  This 
particular  presentment  was  not  filed  until  the 
time  for  publishing  it  in  the  evening  papers 

23 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

was  past  However,  rather  than  disappoint 
the  reporters,  Judge  O'Sullivan  offered  to  tell 
them  what  the  presentment  contained.  And 
it  was  the  judge's  interpretation,  or  his  sum- 
mary of  the  contents  of  the  presentment  and 
not  the  presentment  itself,  which  was  pub- 
lished in  the  newspapers. 

The  newspapers  blazoned  forth  to  the 
world  the  statement  that  the  "Rockefeller 
Jury  Reports  No  White  Slavery,"  and  the 
news  articles  read  thus : 

The  presentment  exonerated  the  city  of  be- 
ing a  clearing-house  for  organized  traffic  in 
leading  young  women  into  lives  of  shame  and 
trafficking  in  them;  it  exonerated  the  New 
York  Independent  Benevolent  Association  by 
name  from  any  share  in  such  enterprise;  it 
found  a  surprisingly  large  number  of  individ- 
uals engaged  in  leading  young  women  astray 
and  disposing  of  them  to  keepers  of  disorder- 
ly houses;  a  number  of  recommendations  were 
made  for  the  suppression  of  vice  in  the  city. 
24 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

What  the  presentment  really  said  was  this : 

It  appears,  from  indictments  found  by  us 
and  from  the  testimony  of  witnesses,  that 
trafficking  in  the  bodies  of  women  does  exist 
and  is  carried  on  by  individuals  acting  for 
their  own  individual  benefit,  and  that  these 
persons  are  known  to  each  other  and  are 
more  or  less  informally  associated. 

We  have  also  found  that  associations  and 
clubs,  composed  mainly  or  wholly  of  those 
profiting  from  vice,  have  existed,  and  that 
one  such  association  still  exists.  These  asso- 
ciations and  clubs  are  analogous  to  commer- 
cial bodies  in  other  fields,  which,  while  not 
directly  engaged  in  commerce  as  a  body,  are 
all  as  individuals  so  engaged. 

This  is  how  the  grand  jury  "exonerated" 
The  New  York  Independent  Benevolent  As- 
sociation : 

After  an  exhausted  investigation  into  the 
activities  of  the  association  and  of  its  mem- 
bers, we  find  no  evidence  that  the  association, 
25 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

as  such,  does  now  or  has  never  trafficked  in  wo- 
men, but  that  such  traffic  is  being,  or  has 
been,  carried  on  by  various  members  as  indi- 
viduals. 

This  much  was  allowed  to  get  into  the  pa- 
pers, but  the  rest  of  the  paragraph  was  dis- 
creetly omitted.  Here  it  is : 

We  find  that  the  members  of  this  associa- 
tion are  scattered  in  many  cities  throughout 
the  United  States.  From  the  testimony  ad- 
duced it  appears  probable  that  the  social  re- 
lation of  the  members  and  the  opportunity 
thereby  afforded  of  communicating  with  one 
another  in  various  cities  have  facilitated  the 
conduct  of  their  individual  business. 

After  citing  a  trenchant  example  of  the 
closeness  of  relationship  between  the  mem- 
bers of  this  exonerated  band  of  worthies,  the 
presentment  goes  on  to  state  that  by  their 
own  confession  practically  every  member  of 
the  association  is  now,  or  has  been  in  the  not 
remote  past,  engaged  in  the  operation  of  dis- 
26 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

orderly  houses  or  in  living  upon  the  proceeds 
of  women's  shame.  The  document  con- 
tinues: 

They  claim,  however,  that  all  members 
who  have  been  convicted  of  a  crime  are  ex- 
pelled from  the  organization  when  the  proof 
of  that  fact  has  been  submitted,  the  offense 
apparently  being  not  the  commission  of  a 
crime,  but  conviction.  It  would  appear  that 
this  procedure  is  for  the  purpose  of  protect- 
ing the  individual  if  possible,  and  failing  in 
that,  of  freeing  the  association  from  criti- 
cism. 

In  reading  the  newspaper's  reports  of  the 
Rockefeller  findings,  and  comparing  them 
with  the  original  document,  I  am  reminded 
of  the  old  patent  medicine  man's  system  of 
preparing  testimonials.  He  would  receive 
a  letter: 

For  years  I  have  suffered  from  rheuma- 
tism, stomach  troubles,  and  near-sightedness. 
I  have  used  four  bottles  of  your  Elixir  of 
27 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

Life.  I  followed  directions  carefully  and  the 
stuff  is  no  good.     I  want  my  money  back. 

JOHN  JONES. 

P.  S.  I  poured  half  of  the  last  bottle 
down  a  wood  chuck's  hole.  It  worked  a  per- 
fect cure.  The  wood  chuck  never  came 
back. 

When  the  letter  appeared  among  his 
testimonials  it  read  as  follows: 

For  years  I  have  suffered  from  rheuma- 
tism, stomach  trouble,  and  near-sightedness. 
I  have  used  four  bottles  of  your  Elixir  of 
Life.  ...  It  worked  a  perfect  cure. 

JOHN  JONES. 


28 


GIRLS  AT  $60  AND  $75  EACH 

ALTHOUGH  the  grand  jury  con- 
scientiously  admitted  that  they 
could  not  find  the  organized 
and  incorporated  traffic  insisted  upon  by 
Judge  O'Sullivan  as  the  only  game  they 
were  pursuing,  the  presentment  recorded 
fifty-four  indictments  as  a  part  of  the  work 
of  the  District  Attorney's  office.  It  also  re- 
ported five  self-declared  dealers  in  women 
who  had  agreed  to  supply  human  flesh  and 
blood  to  the  grand  jury's  agents,  but  because 
of  the  fear  aroused  by  the  newspaper  ac- 
counts of  the  grand  jury's  activities  only  two 
of  these  sales  actually  were  effected.  Two 
of  these  girls  in  one  sale  brought  $75  a  piece, 
the  other  two  in  the  other  sale,  $60  each. 
29 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

All  of  these  dealers  boasted  to  the  inves- 
tigators of  the  extensive  local  and  inter-state 
operations  they  had  been  able  to  carry  on 
without  fear  of  interference  before  the  con- 
vening of  the  grand  jury.     They  specifically 
named  cities  to  which  they  had  forwarded 
women  regularly,  and  described  their  opera- 
tions in  the  recent  past  as  free  from  danger. 
Of  course  the  white  slave  dealers  have  no 
international  formal  or  incorporated  business 
organization.     There  could  be  none  in  the. 
very  nature  of  things;  but,  as  the  grand  jury 
said,  there  is  international  traffic  carried  on 
by  individuals.    This  was  established  beyond 
a  reasonable  doubt  by  the  investigation  start- 
ed by  the   congressional  commission.      This 
congressional  investigation  showed  that  there 
^  was  a  connected  chain  of  men  and  women 
x    trafficking  in  girls  brought  into  this  country 
S    to  be  used  and  sold  as  prostitutes.    The  chain 
/     has  it  largest  center  in  New  York  and  in  Chi- 
cago, and  branch  connections  in  many  other 
30 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

cities.  It  operates  most  freely  in  San  Fran- 
cisco, Los  Angeles,  Seattle,  Nome,  Alaska, 
Omaha,  Denver  and  New  Orleans. 


VI 

HOW  WHITE  SLAVE  TRAFFIC  IS  CARRIED  ON 

FAIRLY  well  established  prices  are 
maintained  for  women,  and  they  are 
referred  to  in  letters  that  have  been 
found  as  "stock."     Few  of  these  women  are 
ruined  or  clubbed  into  submission  after  they 
reach  the  United  States.     London  is  known 
throughout   the   under-world    as    "the    great 
breaking-in  ground"  for  white  slaves. 

The  majority  of  the  men  engaged  in  the 
traffic  also  are  foreigners.  One  of  the  prin- 
cipal members  was  a  Frenchman,  Alphonse 
Dufaur,  living  in  Chicago.  His  books  of  ac- 
count showed  that  his  earnings  as  an  import- 
er exceeded  $100,000  a  year.  After  he  and 
his  wife  were  arrested  they  fled  and  forfeited 
bonds  in  the  sum  of  $25,000. 

Another  man,   high  in  the   ranks  of  the 
3* 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

chain  was  Henry  Lair,  who  ran  a  flourishing 
establishment  in  Chicago  and  San  Francisco. 
One  of  the  chief  New  York  members  was 
Louis  Paint,  both  of  these  men  were  appre- 
hended and  are  now  serving  penitentiary  sen- 
tences. 

In  Chicago,  where  the  most  dramatic  rev- 
elations were   made,   United   States   District 
Attorney  Sims  appointed  one  of  his   assist- 
ants, Harry  Parkin,  to  make  a  detailed  re- 
port on  conditions  in  the  so-called  Levee  dis- 
trict of  the  town.     In  the  worst  quarters  of 
the   town   Mr.    Parkin   found   houses  where^ 
women  were  kept  veritable  prisoners.     The  C 
windows  were  stoutly  barred  in  these  houses,    y 
the  doors  were  padlocked,  and  the  miserable     ) 
inmates  of  the  place  were  practically  without 
clothing.     Parkin  found  plenty  of  proof  not 
only  of  the  sale  and  barter  of  girls,  natives 
as  well   as   foreign,   but  he  -found   evidence 
that  the  sales  were  carried  on  under  the  pro- 
tection of  the  police. 

33 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

The  agitation  resulting  from  this  report 
was  so  great  as  to  shake  up  the  entire  police 
force  and  to  destroy  for  the  time  being  at 
least  an  organized  system  of  graft  which 
reached  pretty  high  up  in  police  and  political 
circles.  The  notorious  Gingles  case  was  given 
the  widest  publicity  of  all  these  graft  cases. 

The  Gingles  girl  was  an  Irish  lace-maker. 
In  Chicago  she  fell  into  the  hands  of  a  no- 
torious group  of  women  procurers,  and,  ac- 
cording to  her  story,  was  tricked  into  going 
to  a  Wabash  Avenue  hotel.  By  her  sworn 
statement  she  was  horribly  mistreated  by  cer- 
tain politicians.  She  was  found  gagged  and 
bound  in  a  bath  room  of  the  hotel.  After 
she  made  her  charges  against  the  women  and 
the  politicians,  one  of  the  women,  a  dealer 
in  lace,  had  the  girl  arrested  on  a  charge  of 
stealing  lace  from  her. 

The  young  lace-maker  was  warmly  defend- 
ed, and  the  money  for  her  maintenance  and 
her  legal  expenses  was  provided  by  club- 
34 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

women  of  Chicago.  Perhaps  this  is  the  first 
instance  in  which  a  woman  of  the  under- 
world was  defended  by  an  organization  of 
women  of  high  social  standing.  Members 
of  the  Chicago  Club  and  a  number  of  out- 
side club  women,  led  by  Mrs.  Ellen  M.  Hen- 
rotin,  a  society  woman,  raised  money  for  the 
girl's  defense,  insisted  upon  a  fair  and  im- 
partial trial,  even  attended  the  hearings,  in 
order  to  give  moral  support  to  the  case. 

But  the  case  was  simply  a  mass  of  con- 
tradictions of  every  kind,  and  one  couldn't 
get  head  or  tail  of  the  thing.  Everybody 
was  found  unot  guilty,"  including  the  girl. 
It  was  simply  hushed  up,  and  the  only  thing 
that  anybody  seemed  to  want  to  prove  was 
that  no  politicians  were  involved.  The  girl 
was  sent  back  to  Ireland  after  it  was  all 
over. 

I  could  go  on  endlessly  detailing  the 
breadth  of  the  white  slave  traffic.  I  would 
stake  my  reputation  on  my  ability  to  take 
35 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

half  a  dozen  conscientious  investigators,  and 
within  a  year  to  show  five  hundred  specific 
cases  of  women  lured  from  their  homes  in 
France,  Hungary,  or  some  other  European 
country;  taken  first  to  London  and  there  sub- 
jected to  terrible  forms  of  cruelty;  and  then 
brought  to  this  country  as  slaves  in  every 
sense  of  the  world. 

Even  with  all  this,  white  slavery  is  only 
a  small  part  of  the  great  social  problem.  The 
most  important  thing  about  white  slavery  is 
that  it  demonstrates  the  vast  network  of  en- 
ergy and  skill  spent  in  forcing  and  artificial- 
ly stimulating  the  hideous  evil  of  prostitution. 


VII 

NOW  MAN'S  BUSINESS,  NOT  WOMAN'S 


brings  us  to  a  vital,  shameful 
fact,  too  little  known  to  the  gen- 
eral public,  but  a  fact  policemen 
have  impressed  on  them  more  and  more 
every  day;  prostitution  as  it  exists  as  an  in- 
teniiitional  traffic  and  as  a  part  of  the  life  of 
every  one  of  our  big  American  cities,  is  no 
longer  a  WOMAN'S  trade;  it  is  a  MAN'S  * 
trade.  There  are  women  procurers,  women 
importers,  and  women  proprietors,  it  is  true, 
but  taken  in  the  main  the  business  is  carried 
on  by  men,  stimulated  far  beyond  its  natural 
proportions  by  men,  and  much  of  the  profits 
are  collected  by  men. 

The   girl  who   disappears   lives   on  some- 
where   in    the    under-world    for    the    money 
profit  of  men.     These  men  who  profit  di- 
37 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

rectly  from  the  shame  of  women  fall  into 
two  classes — procurers  and  protectors.  The 
classes  overlap  one  another,  and  the  men  are 
often  engaged  in  both  ends  of  the  business. 
The  procurer,  or  the  "cadet"  as  he  is  usu- 
ally known,  keeps  up  the  supply  of  women, 
which,  except  for  his  industrious  labors, 
would  fall  far  below  its  present  volume.  For 
while  it  is  undoubtedly  true  that  women  do 
adopt  voluntarily  a  life  of  immorality,  it  is 
easy  to  prove  that  a  large  proportion  of  them 
must  be  forced  or  enticed  into  the  life.  If 
women  in  large  numbers  were  willing  to  be- 
come prostitutes  it  would  not  be  necessary  to 
have  such  enormous  machinery  in  order  to 
recruit  the  ranks.  The  "cadet"  himself 
would  be  unnecessary.  But  so  unwilling  are 
women  to  debase  themselves  that  the  "cadet," 
the  dance  hall,  the  Raines  Law  hotel,  false 
marriages,  drink,  and  even  physical  force  are 
necessary  to  keep  the  hideous  thing  alive. 


VIII 


A  TYPICAL  "CADET"  HISTORY 


THE  American  born  cadet,  of  Irish, 
Italian,  or  Jewish  extraction,  as  a 
rule,   is   a   graduate   of  the   street 
gang.     Usually  he  is  familiar  with  the  whole 
business  of  prostitution  from  his  early  child- 
hood,   and   became   immoral   himself  before 
he  was  fifteen. 

Consider  a  typical  history,  a  youth  whose 
childhood  was  spent  in  an  Irish-American 
neighborhood  in  the  vicinity  of  Cherry  Hill 
in  New  York.  As  the  boy  played  around 
the  front  door  of  his  tenement  or  climbed  the 
stairs  to  his  home  he  was  often  accosted  by 
showily  dressed  women  and  girls  who  paid 
him  liberally,  according  to  his  standards,  to 
run  errands  to  grocery  or  corner  saloon. 
While  still  pathetically  young  the  boy  learned 
39 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

the  nature  of  the  trade  of  these  women.  He 
earned  many  quarters  by  standing  on  a  sa- 
loon corner  after  school  and  handing  their 
business  cards  to  men  passersby. 

At  twelve  a  loyal  member  of  a  neighbor- 
hood gang,  the  boy  was  thoroughly  sophis- 
ticated, entirely  cynical  in  his  moral  point 
of  view.  He  had  a  social  ideal  which  de- 
manded as  many  of  the  material  comforts 
and  pleasures  of  life  as  came  within  his 
knowledge  without  the  necessity  of  purchas- 
ing these  things  with  his  own  labor. 


40 


IX 

BOY  AND  GIRL  MEMBERS  OF  GANGS 

PRACTICALLY  always  these  street 
gangs  sooner  or  later  add  girls  to 
their     membership.        These     girls, 
when  they  are  not  too  young  to  be  employed, 
are  factory  operatives,  cash  girls  or  packers 
in  department  stores,  or  workers  in  other  un- 
skilled low-waged  trades.    To  them  the  gang 
members  are  heroes,  and  they  are  proud  to 
be  taken  into  the  gang's  confidence  and  to 
share  the  proceeds  of  its  petty  thievery. 

Sometimes  each  member  of  the  gang  has 
his  girl,  sometimes  two  or  three  girls  are 
given  the  honor  of  quasi-membership  in  the 
gang  and  are  the  sweethearts  of  the  gang's 
leaders.  In  either  case  immorality  develops. 
Occasionally  seduction  is  accomplished 
through  the  medium  of  the  dance  hall  and 
41 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

its  attendant  drink  evil,  but  in  cases  of  this 
sort  that  is  seldom  necessary. 

In  any  event  the  girl  who  falls,  rarely  at- 
tempts to  reform.  To  her  simple  mind  the 
one  evil  act  has  completely  changed  her  life 
and  character.  She  has  acted  the  part  of  an 
immoral  woman,  and  she  believes  that  she 
has  thereby  joined  the  ranks  of  the  perman- 
ently immoral. 

In  the  history  of  this  particular  boy  the 
girl  was  a  sixteen-year-old  telephone  oper- 
ator. The  boy  was  seventeen,  and  he  was 
already  acquainted  with  the  ways  of  vice. 
Although  he  professed,  not  insincerely,  a  sort 
of  an  affection  for  the  girl,  he  began  very 
soon  to  use  her  as  a  means  of  profit.  He  did 
it  only  occasionally  and  at  periods  of  finan- 
cial distress. 

This  went  on  for  several  months,  when 
one  day  the  young  girl,  with  a  girl  com- 
panion of  her  own  age,  were  arrested  on  the 
street,  and  taken  to  the  night  court.  Fright- 
42 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

ened  half  out  of  his  life  the  boy  and  the  fel- 
low gangster  who  was  responsible  for  the 
second  girl's  delinquency,  fled  to  Jersey  City, 
where  they  waited  in  fear  and  trembling  the 
result  of  the  girl's  examination.  They  might 
have  spared  themselves  both  the  terror  and 
the  flight,  for  with  the  loyalty  which  girls 
of  this  class  often  possess,  they  resisted  the 
questionings  of  the  judge  and  the  persuasion 
of  the  women  probation  officers.  No  amount 
of  cajolery,  reasoning  or  threats  were  able 
to  induce  them  to  reveal  the  names  of  their 
seducers. 

That  settled  the  matter  as  far  as  the  boy 
of  the  incident  was  concerned.  His  career 
once  started  continued  in  consistent  fashion. 
As  time  went  on  he  graduated  from  the 
street  gang  into  a  district  political  club.  The 
politicians  in  command  of  the  district  learned 
to  know  him  as  a  faithful  henchman,  and  at 
election  times  a  conscientious  repeater  and 
strong  arm  man.  They  paid  him  for  his 

43 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

services  by  protecting  him  and  his  "business 
interests"  with  the  police. 

He  was  now  a  full  fledged  "cadet."  In 
the  seven  or  eight  years  since  he  met  and 
ruined  the  little  telephone  girl  he  has  acted 
as  a  procurer  of  nearly  fifty  girls.  For  in 
this  particular  case  the  "cadet"  found  it 
more  profitable  and  more  temperamentally 
congenial  to  sell  his  victims  to  others  for  a 
stated  price,  rather  than  to  hang  on  to  them 
himself  and  share  their  earnings. 


44 


X 

OTHER   INSTANCES  OF   CADETS'  WORK 

IT  may  be  a  matter  of  profound  mystery 
how  these  girls  are  led  into  a  life  so 
terrible.  Policemen  and  women  proba- 
tion officers  of  the  New  York  night  court 
often  come  across  unbelievable  instances  of 
ruin  through  innocence  and  ignorance.  Not 
long  ago  a  woman  in  probation  work  had 
brought  to  the  door  of  her  home  a  child 
scarcely  sixteen  years  of  age.  The  girl  had 
been  brought  from  a  neighboring  state  by  a 
male  procurer.  How  he  made  the  acquaint- 
ance of  the  girl,  a  factory  worker,  is  not 
clear.  It  is  only  certain  that  he  offered  her 
easy  work  in  New  York  City  and  that  when 
she  left  her  native  town  she  had  no  idea  of 
the  life  in  store  for  her.  Before  she  reached 
New  York,  however,  she  knew,  but  in  such 
45 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

manner  had  her  conductor  described  the  life 
of  the  tenderloin  to  her,  and  so  deep  was  the 
girl's  ignorance  of  the  physical  facts  of  life, 
that  she  readily  consented  to  the  man's  pro- 
posal. 

The  house  to  which  he  took  her  and  from 
which  he  collected  a  commission  is  one  of 
the  most  degraded  resorts  in  the  Borough 
of  Manhattan.  Any  description  of  the  place 
would  be  unprintable.  It  is  sufficient  to  say 
that  the  little  factory  girl's  mind  became  al- 
most unbalanced.  She  could  not  comprehend 
the  meaning  of  the  scenes  into  which  she  was 
plunged.  She  could  not  take  part  in  the  riot 
and  orgies  of  the  place.  After  two  or  three 
days  one  of  the  women  residents  of  the  re- 
sort whose  heart  was  not  altogether  corrupt, 
took  pity  on  the  child,  and  seizing  the  first 
opportunity  led  her  to  the  home  of  the  pro- 
bation officer. 

uThere  are  some  things  even  our  kind 
cannot  stand  for,"  said  the  woman.  Then 
46 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

she  slipped  back  into  the  darkness. 

The  department  store,  especially  in  those 
divisions  of  it  where  wages  are  very  low,  is 
a  regular  stamping  ground  for  the  cadet. 
He  picks  out  the  attractive  girl,  scrapes  up 
an  acquaintance  with  her,  and  if  he  finds 
that  she  is  without  protection,  so  much  the 
easier  for  him.  He  offers  her  opportunities 
for  social  enjoyment.  He  takes  her  to  the 
theatre,  to  Central  Park,  to  Coney  Island. 
He  commiserates  her  poor  circumstances,  and 
he  points  out  to  her  handsome  women  dressed 
in  costly  gowns,  riding  in  their  motor  cars. 
He  tells  her  these  were  all  wage  earning  wo- 
men who  discovered  an  easier  way  of  life. 
Gradually  the  poison  sinks  into  her  mind,  and 
soon  there  is  another  moth  singeing  its  wings. 

The  strange  part  of  it  is  that  in  a  great 
measure  he  is  pointing  out  to  her  the  truth, 
for  among  the  most  beautiful  gowns  you  will 
see  in  Central  Park  or  on  Fifth  Avenue, 
many  of  them  are  worn  by  fallen  women. 
47 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

For  in  the  thirty  thousand — these  figures  are 
not  exaggeration,  they  are  too  conservative  if 
anything — women  engaged  in  the  social  evil 
in  New  York  City  there  are  many  classes  of 
women.  There  are  some  who  live  in  the 
most  magnificent  luxury,  whose  incomes  run 
far  into  the  thousands.  They,  in  most  cases, 
are  not  the  sort  of  women  one  generally  puts 
under  the  heading  of  prostitutes.  They  have 
developed  the  business  to  a  science  and  have 
a  select  and  limited  clientele.  These  wo- 
men are  held  up  to  the  girl  who  toils  as 
glowing  examples  of  success  in  life,  but  to  the 
police  eye  they  are  one  of  the  biggest  factors 
in  the  social  evil.  They  never  place  them- 
selves in  a  position  where  arrest  would  be 
even  remotely  possible,  and  often  are  ac- 
counted persons  of  eminent  respectability  by 
their  immediate  neighbors. 

Another  level  in  the  social  scale  of  the 
half-world  is  occupied  by  the  chorus  girl,  who 
had  come  to  be  an  indispensable  figure  in  the 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

dramatic  world.  Most  of  these  girls  come 
to  New  York  with  the  honest  intention  of 
earning  a  respectable  living  in  the  dramatic 
profession.  Many  of  them  do  remain  hon- 
est, but  if  they  do  the  chances  are  strong 
that  they  advance  little  in  their  work,  and 
their  purity  is  retained  only  by  overcoming 
numerous  temptations.  For  so  great  a  prize 
does  the  show  girl  become  that  there  are  in 
New  York  regular  brokers  who  maintain  in 
the  theater  districts  secret  agents  to  help  them 
gain  for  any  rich  client  the  acquaintance  of 
a  girl  whose  face  or  figure  has  struck  his 
fancy.  Often  the  agent  is  some  member  of 
a  chorus,  and  generally  she  is  one  who  has 
been  a  previous  victim.  To  these  girls  is  held 
the  lure  of  money,  elegant  clothing,  wine  din- 
ners. Sometimes  the  basis  is  the  offer  of  in- 
fluence in  gaining  advancement  on  the  stage. 


49 


XI 

SYSTEM  EMPLOYED  TO  MAKE  WOMEN 
IMMORAL 

THAT,  however,  is  only  one  of  the 
many  methods  by  which  men  per- 
suade hitherto  innocent  and  re- 
spectable girls  to  forget  their  homes  and  the 
teachings  of  their  parents.  They  manage  by 
very  subtle  ways.  Remember  that  the  aver- 
age victim  is  of  slight  education.  She  belongs 
to  a  more  or  less  helpless  class.  The  pro- 
curer's task  is  rendered  the  easier  on  account 
of  the  victim's  lack  of  intellectual  resources. 
Let  one  of  these  unfortunates  tell  her  own 
story. 

She  was  a  clerk  in  a  Brooklyn  department 

store,  earning  $5.00  a  week.     The  girl  had 

no  friends  or  relatives  in  the  city,  and  how 

she  managed  to  exist  on  such  small  wages 

50 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

I  shall  not  venture  to  explain.  She  yielded 
to  the  solicitations  of  a  chance  acquaintance, 
a  man  who,  on  one  pretense  or  another, 
haunted  the  scene  of  the  girl's  daily  toil.  He 
was  a  man  of  good  address  and  apparent  sin- 
cerity. When  after  a  very  short  acquaint- 
ance he  professed  affection  and  offered  mar- 
riage, the  girl  accepted.  ^  Any  marriage 
seemed  better  to  her  than  the  ill-paid  drudg- 
ery in  which  she  had  lived.  The  man  repre- 
sented to  this  young  girl  that  he  was  the 
owner  of  a  prosperous  manicuring  and  hair- 
dressing  establishment,  and  he  proposed  to 
her  that  she  learn  the  trade  and  help  him 
to  carry  on  the  business,  a  proposal  to  which 
she  gladly  acceded. 

There  was  no  misrepresentation  as  far  as 
the  manicuring  establishment  was  concerned. 
It  did  in  fact  exist  but  it  had  immoral  fea- 
tures connected  with  it. 

Very  soon  after  her  marriage  the  young 
woman  was  introduced  to  a  group  of  men 
51 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

who  dropped  in  almost  every  evening  to  play 
cards  and  gossip  with  the  proprietor  of  the 
establishment.  It  was  strange  talk  that  the 
former  shop  girl  listened  to.  Tale  after  tale 
of  girls  who  to  show  their  faithfulness  to 
their  husbands  in  time  of  financial  distress 
descended  into  the  depths  of  degradation. 
These  girls  were  always  spoken  of  in  terms 
of  deepest  admiration.  Their  deeds  were 
extolled  as  examples  of  heroic  self-sacrifice. 
Other  tales  more  gruesome  were  unfolded. 
Tales  of  terrible  retribution  that  followed  at- 
tempts of  the  girls  to  free  themselves.  How 
one  girl  had  wearied  of  her  life  and  "self- 
ishly" determined  to  escape  from  her  master. 
How  she  slipped  away  one  night,  as  she  be- 
lieved, without  the  knowledge  of  a  living 
soul.  Yet  as  she  passed  by  an  unlighted  alley 
a  mysterious  figure  darted  out  of  the  dark- 
ness and  struck  the  girl  fairly  in  the  face 
with  a  razor.  She  arose,  dazed  and  bleed- 
ing, her  face  slashed,  her  beauty  ruined  for 
52 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

life. 

These  tales  multiplied  until  the  mind  of 
the  young  woman  became  saturated  with  ter- 
ror. Yet  when  her  husband  made  his  first 
dreadful  proposals  to  her  she  still  retained 
strength  of  character  to  refuse  to  play  the 
part  he  assigned  her.  He  did  not  try  to 
force  her  into  a  life  of  immorality  but  his 
treatment  of  her  became  cruel  in  the  extreme. 

This  lasted  for  perhaps  a  fortnight,  at  the 
end  of  which  time  she  was  in  a  state  of  des- 
perate fear.  Then  the  man's  cruelty  ceased 
and  he  became  kind  and  attentive  once  more. 
He  begged  her  forgiveness  for  past  harsh- 
ness and  suggested  to  her  that  they  live  on 
terms  of  mutual  kindness  and  forbearance. 
The  nature  of  the  forbearance,  as  far  as  the 
girl  was  concerned,  was  apparent  to  her,  but 
rather  than  face  again  the  period  of  cruelty 
and  abuse  she  consented  to  the  immorality  he 
had  proposed  for  her  in  the  beginning.  Any- 
thing seemed  to  her  better  than  the  misery  in 

53 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

• 

which  she  had  lived  during  those  few  terrible 
weeks. 

Once  having  entered  the  life  she  saw  no 
possible  means  of  escape.  Whenever  the  im- 
pulse to  run  away  occurred  to  her  she  re- 
membered the  tales  of  slashing  and  murder 
related  by  her  husband's  associates.  She  be- 
came a  veritable  white  slave.  From  that 
time  on  she  was  a  pliant  tool  of  the  system. 

It  is  by  means  of  this  kind,  by  an  infernal 
knowledge  of  the  psychology  of  wroman's 
mind  that  the  white  slaver  is  able  to  manage 
his  victims. 


54 


XII 

SOME     RECRUITED    THROUGH     ALLEGED 
EMPLOYMENT  AGENCIES 

1  CANNOT  take  the  space  here  to  dis- 
cuss every  means  employed  to  ruin  girls. 
I  can  only  touch  on  the  broader,  more 
typical  aspects  of  the  situation.    Among  these 
must  be  mentioned  evilly  conducted  employ- 
ment agencies,  which  are  now  receiving  mer- 
ited attention  by  women's  clubs  and  various 
reform  organizations  in  all  parts  of  the  coun- 
try.    Here  is  a  typical  story,  illustrative  of 
this  phase  of  the  evil: 

One  day  a  man  in  Chicago  received  a  note 
reading  as  follows : 

"DEAR  MR.  BLANK:  Please  come  down 
and  see  me  at  once.  I  am  in  trouble.  Would 
like  very  much  to  see  you.  Come  to  Bob 

55 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

Grey  Cafe,  Twenty-first  street  and  Armour 
Avenue.  You  will  be  surprised  to  find  me 
there,  but  I  could  not  help  this. 

"DOLLY   J." 

According  to  the  man's  story,  the  girl  who 
signed  the  note  had  been  a  waitress  in  a 
country  hotel  sometimes  visited  by  him.  The 
girl  had  been  lured  to  Chicago  under  prom- 
ise of  more  remunerative  work  and  by  a  man 
who  posed  as  an  employment  agent.  He 
placed  her  in  a  house,  which  was  to  all  in- 
tents and  purposes,  a  prison.  The  girl  had 
been  kept  there  and  most  terribly  abused  for 
a  period  of  some  months.  Believing  her  to 
be  thoroughly  broken  in,  her  jailors  were 
now  permitting  her  the  liberty  of  seeking  cus- 
tomers in  the  saloons  and  cafes  of  the  Levee 
district.  Finding  in  the  telephone  book  the 
address  of  the  one  man  she  knew  in  Chicago, 
she  secretly  wrote  her  pathetic  appeal.  She 
was  rescued  and  sent  back  to  her  parents. 

56 


XIII 

WORKING  AMONG   SCHOOL    CHILDREN 

ONE  side  of  the  wretched  business 
of  procuring  has  been  too  gener- 
ally overlooked.  I  refer  to  the 
groups  of  men  and  half-grown  boys  who 
work  in  the  vicinity  of  schools  and  through- 
out the  tenement  districts  of  the  large  cities. 
Their  business  is  the  debauching  of  little 
girls,  children  often  too  young  to  realize  the 
nature  of  the  degradation  offered  them.  Yet 
after  a  short  time  the  minds  as  well  as  the 
bodies  of  these  poor  children  are  so  corrupted 
that  they  are  literally  ruined  for  any  life 
except  one  of  immorality. 

These  gangs  and  their  victims  are  one  of 
the  principal  recruiting  systems  of  the  evil. 
Constantly  active,  the  gangs  overlook  no  op- 
portunity for  plying  their  traffic.    They  hang 
57 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

around  the  evening  schools  to  such  an  extent 
that  many  girls  fear  to  go  to  school  unat- 
tended. Recreation  centers,  play-grounds, 
and  parks  furnish  fertile  fields  for  their  ac- 
tivities. 


XIV 

DANGEROUS   DARKNESS   IN   MOVING   PICTURE 
SHOWS 

MUCH  has  been  said  of  the  par- 
ticipation of  the  moving  picture 
show   in  the  whole  question  of 
the    social   evil.      Now   the   moving   picture 
show  and  the  nickelodeon  are  not  in  them- 
selves bad  things.    The  shows  are  rarely  vici- 
ous, and  within  the  last  two  years  fully  90 
per  cent,   of  the  motion   picture  films  have 
been  voluntarily  subjected  to  censorship. 

There  is  only  one  objection  to  the  moving 
picture  theater,  and  that  is  that  it  is  conduct- 
ed in  darkness.  This  applies  to  about  two- 
thirds  of  the  cheap  theaters.  There  is  abso- 
lutely no  excuse  for  this  state  of  affairs.  It 
costs  only  about  $25.00  to  properly  equip 
for  lighting  one  of  these  theaters,  and  the 
59 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

light  does  not  interfere  with  the  effectiveness 
of  the  pictures. 

The  cheap  theaters,  the  nickleodeon,  the 
motion  picture  places  are  to  young  children 
from  fourteen  to  sixteen  what  the  dance  hall 
is  to  the  older  girls  and  boys.  It  is  true  that 
in  most  places  there  are  regulations  forbid- 
ding the  admission  of  children  unaccompanied 
by  their  elders,  but  the  regulations  are  to  a 
very  large  extent  ignored.  To  these  theaters 
with  their  atmosphere  of  darkness  and  ob- 
scurity flock  the  procurer.  No  one  can  tell 
with  any  degree  of  accuracy  how  great  his 
harvest  has  been,  but  it  is  certain  that  the 
dark  theaters  have  been  and  still  continue  to 
be  a  terrible  menace  to  the  morals  of  young 
girls. 


60 


XV 

THE   POSITION  OF  THE   PROTECTOR 

WHERE  the  work  of  the  cadet 
leaves  off,  the  labors  of  the  "pro- 
tector"   begin.      He    is    the    im- 
moral woman's  man  of  business.     He  is  her 
friend,  even  her  lover  sometimes,  and  he  is 
her  master  at  all  times. 

The  police  know  of  many  men  who  have 
no  other  vocation,  who  live  entirely  from  the 
earnings  of  their  women.  Naturally  you 
wonder  why  they  do  not  arrest  them  and 
send  them  to  prison  or  drive  them  from  the 
community.  There  are  several  reasons. 
First  of  all  stands  the  fact  that  these  men 
make  it  one  of  the  principal  parts  of  their 
trade  to  ustand  in"  with  the  political  pow- 
ers. I  do  not  and  never  have  believed  that 
Tammany,  as  much  as  I  hate  Tammany,  offi- 
61 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

cially  recognizes  these  fellows.  But  if  they 
pay  their  dues  regularly  and  perform  their 
part  willingly  at  election  time,  Tammany  does 
not  ask  questions,  and  when  a  faithful  hench- 
man runs  afoul  of  the  police,  Tammany  will 
"take  care"  of  him.  Policemen  know  this. 
Some  of  them  take  bribe  money  to  keep  hands 
off,  but  even  the  honest  men  hesitate  to  ar- 
rest a  man  who  is  "strong"  with  the  organi- 
zation. They  know,  too,  that  conviction  is 
impossible  without  the  woman's  testimony, 
and  in  only  one  case  out  of  a  hundred  will 
she  testify  against  her  master.  The  magis- 
trates, either  because  they  are  too  much,  im- 
pressed by  the  old  rule  of  letting  a  score  of 
guilty  men  escape  rather  than  convict  one  in- 
nocent, seem  always  to  give  the  prisoner, 
never  the  policeman,  the  benefit  of  the  doubt. 
The  immoral  woman  needs  a  protector  as 
a  matter  of  business.  For  just  as  the  supply 
of  immoral  women  is  artifically  stimulated, 
so  must  the  demand  for  their  services  be  arti- 
62 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

fically  stimulated.  There  is  not  enough  de- 
pravity in  human  nature  to  keep  alive  a  very 
large  business  of  prostitution.  The  immor- 
ality of  women  and  the  brutishness  of  man 
has  to  be  persuaded,  coaxed  and  constantly 
stimulated,  in  order  to  keep  the  social  evil 
its  present  state  of  prosperity.  The  protec- 
tor finds  patrons  for  his  women  or  for  the 
house  in  which  she  works  if  she  be  a  house 
dweller.  He  stands  between  her  and  the  pro- 
prietor of  a  house  who  charges  her  three 
prices  for  board  and  for  finery. 

If  she  runs  afoul  of  the  police  he  uses  his 
political  pull  to  secure  her  release,  or  failing 
that  he  secures  a  lawyer  for  her.  He  takes 
care  of  her  interests  in  business  and  in  police 
court.  If  she  is  sent  to  Blackweirs  Island  he 
meets  her  on  her  release  and  provides  her 
with  money. 

This  protector  may  be  selected  by  a  wo- 
man after  she  has  entered  her  life  of  immor- 
ality. She  is  bound  to  him  by  ties  of  affection 

63 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

as  well  as  interest.  He  represents  to  her  a 
certain  domesticity.  He  is  the  one  human  be- 
ing with  whom  she  is  on  a  sincere  basis.  Liv- 
ing in  a  world  of  lies,  hypocrisy,  and  pre- 
tense, she  stands  in  need  of  some  one  man  to 
whom  she  can  reveal  her  true  mind. 

Often  the  protector  is  also  the  "cadet,"  and 
in  many  cases  he  is  the  legal  husband.  Case 
after  case  has  come  to  the  knowledge  of  in- 
vestigators where  perfectly  respectable  girls 
have  married  in  love  and  good  faith  men 
whose  deliberate  intention  it  was  to  live  on 
the  proceeds  of  their  shame. 

The  laws  against  procuring  are  very  strict, 
but  making  laws  and  enforcing  laws  are  two 
radically  different  propositions.  In  enforcing 
laws  on  this  particular  subject,  the  police  con- 
front that  same  psychological  phenomenon 
that  saves  many  a  protector  from  prison— 
the  women,  from  fear  or  fancied  loyalty  or 
shame,  will  not  testify  against  them.  Now 
and  then  they  do  turn  on  the  cadet,  but  I 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

have  known  magistrates  in  New  York  and 
elsewhere  to  deal  light  sentences  even  then  on 
the  theory  that  ua  woman  of  that  sort  cannot 
be  believed,  anyway." 


XVI 

REMEDIES  THAT  ARE   POSSIBLE 

I  HAVE  told  you  some  pretty  revolting 
things,  but  I  believe  it  is  necessary  to 
tell  them.    There  is  only  one  excuse  for 
a  discussion,  public  or  private,  of  the  social 
evil.    There  is  only  one  motive  we  can  have 
in  dealing  with  it,  and  that  motive  is  a  de- 
sire to  find  a  remedy.    There  must  be  a  cure, 
or  at  least  there  must  be  alleviation. 

When  I  was  police  commissioner  I  received 
more  than  one  deputation  of  clergymen, 
more  than  one  individual  clergyman,  who 
came  to  me  and  said:  "General  Bingham, 
the  street-walkers  are  parading  up  and  down 
in  front  of  my  church,  plying  their  infamous 
trade  right  under  the  eyes  of  the  boys  and 
girls  who  go  to  my  Sunday  school.  Now 
you  must  drive  them  away." 
66 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

"Certainly,"  I  would  say,  "and  where 
would  you  have  me  drive  them?" 

"I  don't  care  where  you  drive  them,  but 
get  them  away  from  my  church  you  must." 

"How  would  it  do,"  I  have  asked  these 
men,  "for  me  to  drive  the  street-walkers  over 
to  Dr.  So-and-So's  church?" 

And  that  is  the  way  such  conversation  al- 
ways must  end.  It's  very  well  to  say  "drive 
prostitution  out,"  but  out  where?  It  exisits. 
It  is  a  fact.  You  can't  kill  a  fact,  but  you 
can  do  something  with  it.  And  friends,  as 
long  as  we  fail  to  do  something  with  it,  we 
each  and  every  one  of  us  are  guilty  of  par- 
ticipation in  the  social  evil,  for  I  assure  you, 
that  if  prostitution  were  properly  handled— 
I  will  make  that  stronger  and  say,  wherever 
prostitution  has  been  properly  handled — the 
white  slave  traffic  has  been  killed,  and  prosti- 
tution itself  has  been  reduced  to  the  mini- 
mum. 


XVII 

MAYOR  "GOLDEN  RULE"  JONES  SOLVED  THE 
PROBLEM  BY  SEGREGATION 

1CAN    illustrate    this    point    no    better 
than    by    relating   Toledo's    experience. 
During  the   administration   of  the   late 
Mayor  Jones,  uGolden  Rule  Jones, "  a  depu- 
tation of  clergymen  called  on  Mayor  Jones 
and   told   him   that  the   city  of  Toledo   de- 
manded the   suppressing  of  the   social   evil. 
Respectable  people  could  bear  it  no  longer; 
they  demanded  that  every  woman  of  ill  re- 
pute be  compelled  to  leave  Toledo. 

"Gentlemen,"  said  Mayor  Jones  seriously, 
"not  one  of  you  loathes  the  social  evil  more 
than  I.  Not  one  of  you  would  more  gladly 
put  a  stop  to  the  whole  wretched  business. 
And  if  you  can  suggest  any  way  on  earth  in 
which  it  can  be  done,  I  shall  be  only  to  thank- 
68 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

ful  to  work  with  you.  You  say  'send  these 
women  out' — where  shall  we  send  them  ?  To 
Cleveland?  To  Akron?  Would  that  be 
fair?  And  if  they  remain  here  are  you  will- 
ing to  help  them  earn  an  honest  living? 
They  have  to  keep  on  living  you  know.  Are 
you  willing  to  befriend  them,  uplift  them, 
protect  them?  I  will  take  one  of  them  into 
my  home.  Will  each  of  you?" 

Of  course  they  were  not  willing,  not  a 
man  of  them.  Then,  after  a  lot  of  discus- 
sion and  hot  words  that  got  nowhere,  Mayor 
Jones  said : 

"Gentlemen,  I  cannot  drive  these  women 
out  of  town,  I  cannot  suppress  the  social  evil  in 
Toledo.  But  I'll  tell  you  what  I  can  do,  I 
can  segregate  it,  I  can  control  it.  That  much 
I  can  do  and  will  do.  How  does  it  suit 
you?" 

It  suited  nobody,  and  the  delegation  went 
out  denouncing  the  "Golden  Rule"  adminis- 
tration bitterly.  The  Golden  Rule,  accord- 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

ing  to  most  people,  is  all  very  well  in  its  place, 
that  place  being  the  New  Testament.  To  ap- 
ply it  to  the  social  evil  is  beyond  the  compre- 
hension of  the  average  clergyman  or  citizen. 

Nevertheless  Mayor  Jones  did  segregate 
the  evil  and  it  remains  segregated  to  this  day. 

This  is  how  segregation  worked  in  an  Ohio 
city  of  200,000  population.  They  confine 
the  business  to  a  certain  quarter  of  the  town. 
They  allow  street-walkers  on  no  other  streets 
except  those  designated.  They  allow  no  pi- 
anos, no  noise,  no  revelry.  Nothing  exists 
in  Toledo's  red-light  district  except  the  plain, 
unadorned  business  of  prostitution.  The  po- 
lice rules  governing  it  are  few  and  simple. 
Every  person  in  the  district  knows  them  by 
heart,  and  they  know  they  have  to  obey  them ; 
otherwise,  their  business  is  broken  up. 

There   is  no  such  thing   in  Toledo   as   a 

white  slave.     The  police  would  not  permit 

it.     Any  woman  in  the  district  knows  that  as 

long  as  she  obeys  the  police  rules  she  may 

70 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

claim  police  protection.  There  is  no  such 
thing  as  police  graft  in  Toledo.  This  is  pos- 
sible only  because  they  have  a  thoroughly 
efficient,  honest,  and  intelligent  Chief  of  Po- 
lice, and  his  work  is  backed  up  by  an  abso- 
lutely honest,  sincere  and  intelligent  mayor, 
Brand  Whitlock. 

Cleveland  is  another  Ohio  city  which  has 
had  a  police  chief  brave  enough  to  acknowl- 
edge the  fact  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  a 
social  evil.  Chief  Koher  has  dealt  with  the 
matter  precisely  as  Mayor  Jones  dealt  with 
it,  and  as  Mayor  Whitlock  in  Toledo  con- 
tinues to  deal  with  it.  They  have  their  red- 
light  district  in  Cleveland,  but  they  have  it 
thoroughly  under  control,  and  they  have  no 
white  slavery.  They  have  no  such  thing  as 
a  country  girl  lured  to  a  house  of  ill  repute 
under  pretense  of  obtaining  honest  employ- 
ment, and  afterwards  kept  in  horrid  bond- 
age. They  have  no  such  thing  as  a  young 
immigrant  girl,  ignorant  of  the  language,  in 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

fear  of  her  life,  being  beaten  into  subjection 
and  infamy  by  a  brutal  master. 


72 


XVIII 

SUPPORTING  CITIES  BY  LEVYING  TRIBUTE  ON 
FALLEN  WOMEN 

ABOVE  all,  they  have  no  such 
criminal  system  that  exists  in  New 
York  City  and  in  almost  every 
city  and  town  in  the  country  of  exacting  tri- 
bute from  these  unfortunate  women.  I  re- 
fer to  that  variety  of  hold-up  known  as  the 
fining  system.  Go  into  the  night  court  in 
New  York  City,  into  the  police  courts  of  any 
other  city,  and  see  the  system  work.  The 
women  are  arrested  on  the  streets,  or  in  the 
houses,  loaded  in  patrol  wagons  and  brought 
to  the  police  station.  If  it  is  in  New  York 
they  are  taken  to  Jefferson  Market  court,  in 
which  the  night  court  holds  its  session. 
Brought  before  the  judge  the  painted  trav- 
esty of  womanhood  is  put  through  the  farce 

73 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

of  a  trial  lasting  from  two  minutes  to  ten 
minutes.  The  policeman  swears  that  he  saw 
her  ply  her  trade.  She  denies  it.  No  one  ex- 
cept the  policeman  appears  in  the  matter.  If 
the  magistrate  is  one  of  the  "easy"  ones  he 
gives  perhaps  two-thirds  of  the  women  the 
benefit  of  a  doubt  and  discharges  them.  It 
is  perfectly  plain  that  they  belong  to  the  class, 
but  unless  the  policeman  has  a  pretty  strong 
story  to  tell  the  woman  gets  off.  Others  less 
fortunate  walk  over  to  the  clerk's  desk,  pay 
a  fine  and  walk  out. 

Thus  the  farce  goes  on,  and  thus  does  the 
city  share  in  the  wages  of  women's  shame. 
In  some  cities  the  schools  are  partially  sup- 
ported, the  libraries  and  public  parks  are 
kept  up  on  the  proceeds  of  a  trade  so  hid- 
eous that  the  good  people  who  send  their 
children  to  school  and  who  patronize  the 
libraries  and  parks  will  not  permit  mention  of 
it.  In  order  that  the  schools  may  be  main- 
tained and  the  children  of  the  city  receive  an 
74 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

education,  it  is  regarded  as  necessary  that 
these  raids  and  fines  be  made  with  systematic 
regularity.  Can  any  good  and  respectable 
citizen  explain  the  difference  between  regular 
and  systematic  fining  and  the  license  system? 
It  is  true  that  if  the  fining  system  were 
given  up  a  large  masculine  population  would 
suffer  severe  financial  loss.  The  fining  sys- 
tem is  the  most  prolific  source  of  police  graft 
in  existence.  Magistrates,  be  it  known,  are 
of  two  varieties,  hard  and  easy.  The  police 
know,  and  the  women  know,  that  a  hard 
magistrate  is  sitting,  and  the  women  are  will- 
ing to  pay  a  pretty  heavy  graft  in  order  to 
avoid  arrest.  I  firmly  believe  that  fully  eigh- 
ty-five per  cent,  of  the  police  of  New  York 
City  are  honest  men,  but  the  honest  police- 
man, like  other  honest  men,  are  more  or  less 
quiescent.  The  fifteen  per  cent,  who  are 
grafters,  are  active.  They  arc  always  on  the 
alert.  The  grafters  are  men  powerful  in  pol- 
itics and  they  are  able  to  do  a  terrific  amount 
75 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

of  hold-up  work  among  the  unclassed.  It  is 
always  easier  and  cheaper  for  the  woman  to 
pay  bribe  money  than  to  go  to  court.  So 
she,  or  her  protector,  sound  out  a  new  man 
on  a  beat  or  a  new  captain  in  a  station.  They 
may  send  him  presents  at  first.  If  he  shows 
a  disposition  to  treat  with  them,  they  pay  al- 
ways in  advance. 

In  point  of  numbers,  much  larger  than 
grafting  policemen,  is  another  masculine  pop- 
ulation which  flourishes  under  the  fining  sys- 
tem. The  night  court  in  New  York  was  es- 
tablished for  the  definite  purpose  of  abol- 
ishing these  men,  and  it  has  been  partially 
successful.  In  other  cities,  however,  the  tribe 
flourishes.  I  am  speaking  of  the  professional 
bondsman  necessary  to  a  woman  to  whom  ar- 
rest means  detention  over  night  and  a  loss 
of  a  night's  earnings.  The  system  as  it  used 
to  operate  in  New  York,  and  still  operates 
in  some  cities,  is  for  each  one  to  employ  a 
"trailer,"  an  individual  who  hires  himself  out 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

to  follow  the  unfortunate  woman,  and  in  case 
of  her  arrest  to  report  by  telephone  to  one 
of  the  professional  bondsmen,  often  a  saloon 
keeper,  or  the  owner  of  property  used  for 
immoral  purposes.  Promptly  he  appears  and 
gives  bail  for  the  woman's  appearance  the 
next  day  in  court.  For  this  service  he  receives 
$5  or  more  from  the  woman,  who  is  then 
able  to  go  forth  and  earn  the  money  which 
she  must  pay  next  morning  in  court. 


77 


XIX 

LITTLE   USE   FOR  THE  ONE  RATIONAL   INSTI- 
TUTION   FOR   FALLEN  WOMEN 

LESS  than  fifty  miles  from  New 
York  City  there  is  an  institution 
known  as  the  Bedford  Reforma- 
tory. It  exists  for  the  reformation  of  de- 
linquent women,  and  once  in  a  great  while  a 
city  magistrate  will  send  a  woman  there  in- 
stead of  to  the  workhouse.  I  think  I  saw 
it  stated  that  in  the  year  1909  three  thou- 
sand women  were  sent  to  the  workhouse  and 
eleven  to  Bedford.  This  does  not  argue 
malevolence  on  the  part  of  the  magistrates. 
The  fact  is  they  cannot  get  it  out  of  their 
heads  that  sending  a  woman  to  a  reformatory 
is  a  punishment.  They  can't  imagine  doing 
anything  for  an  unfortunate  woman  except 
punishing  her;  and  Bedford  they  consider  a 
78 


THAT  DISAPPEARS 

very  severe  punishment  indeed.  Why?  Be- 
cause women  must  be  committed  to  Bedford 
on  an  indeterminate  sentence,  the  limit  being 
three  years,  and  many  a  magistrate  has  been 
quoted  as  saying  that  a  three  years'  sentence 
was  too  severe. 

The  falsity  of  this  position  is  apparent  to 
anybody  who  knows  anything  about  the  sys- 
tem in  vogue  at  Bedford.  Under  the  su- 
perintendency  of  Miss  Katherine  Bement  Da- 
vis, Bedford  presents  a  perfectly  rational  plan 
for  the  reformation  of  those  women  who 
have  not  sunk  too  low  for  the  helping  hand 
to  grasp.  It  is  operated  on  the  cottage  sys- 
tem, the  women  proceeding  from  a  fairly  se- 
vere degree  of  detention  and  discipline  to  the 
lightest  possible.  They  are  first  taken  to  a 
reception  cottage,  carefully  examined  by  a 
competent  woman  physician,  and,  if  neces- 
sary, segregated  in  a  hospital. 

As  soon  as  a  woman  is  placed  in  a  normal 
state  of  mind  and  body  she  is  given  work  to 
79 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

do,  household  work  of  course,  but  other  work 
as  well  according  to  her  individual  capacity. 
A  great  deal  of  gardening  and  outdoor  work 
is  done  at  Bedford,  and  the  handsome  con- 
crete walk  and  long  flight  of  steps  across  the 
grounds  is  entirely  the  work  of  women's 
hands.  A  group  of  unusually  strong  and 
musuclar  women  did  the  work,  and  when  it 
was  finished  the  other  women  in  their  cot- 
tages rewarded  them  with  a  banquet. 

Putting  all  prejudice,  all  hypocrisy  aside, 
what  system  seems  to  you  most  sensible,  most 
humane,  most  civilized,  most  Christian.  The 
old  system  of  closing  our  eyes  to  facts,  deny- 
ing the  plain  truth,  and  allowing  a  monstrous 
evil  to  exist  unchanged;  to  allow  countless 
thousands  of  its  miserable  victims  to  suffer 
infamy,  pain  and  death;  to  permit  that  mon- 
strous thing  fitly  termed  uthe  black  plague" 
to  continue  year  after  year,  maiming  and  de- 
stroying innocent  women  and  children ;  to  ac- 
knowledge the  truth,  segregate  and  control 
80 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

it  and  establish  institutions  like  Bedford  for 
the  rescue  of  those  women  and  girls  still  ca- 
pable of  being  rescued? 


81 


XX 

THE  SOLUTION  OF  THE   PROBLEM 


H 


AD  I  remained  at  the  head  of 
the  New  York  police  six  months 
longer  I  would  have  segregated 
the  social  evil  there.  I  had  my  plans  all 
worked  out.  I  intended  to  divide  the  city 
into  four  districts,  North,  South,  East  and 
AVest.  In  each  of  these  parts  of  New  York 
there  is  now  a  portion  given  over  to  build- 
ings that  are  used  mostly  for  prostitution.  If 
there  are  decent  families  among  them  it 
would  be  better  for  them  to  move.  I  would 
have  had  them  moved,  and  there  would  have 
been  border  lines  established  beyond  which 
the  women  of  the  under-world  would  have 
been  prohibited  to  go.  Eventually  I  would 
have  instructed  the  policemen  detailed  to  this 
district,  to  stop  strangers  entering  it,  and  to 
tell  them  where  they  were  going.  Then,  if 
82 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

the  man  wanted  to  continue  on  his  way,  he 
would  be  allowed  to  do  so.  But  the  thing 
would  have  been  made  as  unattractive  as  pos- 
sible. There  would  have  been  no  bright 
lights,  and  none  of  the  glamour  that  sur- 
rounds certain  phases  of  the  evil  in  New  York 
City  now. 

This  would  not  have  stamped  out  the  so- 
cial evil,  but  it  would  have  reduced  it  to  a 
minimum. 

It  would  have  removed  the  low-priced 
prostitute  from  the  tenement  house.  At  the 
present  time,  in  almost  every  large  tenement 
house  inhabited  by  from  twenty  to  forty  or 
more  families,  you  will  find  at  least  one  wo- 
man who  follows  the  calling  in  her  dwelling. 
In  the  same  house  you  will  find  many  young 
girls  and  boys  to  whom  her  presence  is  a 
menace,  and  frequently  a  contagion.  Of  the 
agencies  which  tend  to  break  down  among 
the  poor  the  natural  feeling  against  the  evil, 
the  presence  of  these  flashily  dressed  women 

83 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

of  the  streets  as  neighbors  is  of  terrible  im- 
portance. The  prostitute  invariably  is  better 
dressed  than  her  neighbors.  In  fact,  she  is, 
in  the  parlance  of  the  slums,  ua  swell  dress- 
er." She  can  spend  her  days  idly  in  her 
home.  At  night  she  is  supposed  to  frequent 
public  places  of  amusement  and  to  have  "a 
good  time  of  it."  Her  life  is  one  of  ease, 
luxury,  and  enjoyment,  in  the  eyes  of  her 
neighbors.  Creature  comforts  count  for 
much  with  most  of  us.  To  the  very  poor, 
especially  the  very  poor  shopgirls  who  work 
in  the  big  stores  with  all  their  atmosphere  of 
spending  and  pleasure,  the  urge  of  life  is  par- 
ticularly keen.  And  it  would  have  done 
away  with  white  slavery,  for  where  the  pro- 
tector cannot  hold  over  a  woman  the  fear 
that  she  is  doing  something  that  lays  her  lia- 
ble to  immediate  arrest,  he  cannot  keep  her 
in  his  clutches.  I  would  have  been  criticised, 
and  I  expected  it.  I  will  be  criticised  for 
this  book,  and  I  expect  that;  but  I  found 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

that  there  were  enough  people  really  willing 
to  think  about  a  problem  of  this  sort  to  make 
me  feel  that  I  would  have  the  support  of 
those  brave  enough  not  to  be  hypocrites. 

I  believe  there  is  another  thing  we  should 
do  in  this  country,  and,  it,  too,  is  a  step  im- 
mediately following  clearing  away  the  cob- 
webs of  Puritanism.  We  should  have  in  Eu- 
rope a  spy  system  modeled  in  a  way  after 
the  customs  spy  service  of  the  United  States 
Government.  It  would  not  need  to  be  so  ex- 
tensive as  the  customs  service,  and  it  could 
be  maintained  at  an  expense  that  is  slight 
when  compared  with  the  cost  in  human  mis- 
ery of  our  present  indifference;  but  a  few 
alert  men  could  discover  and  prevent  many 
of  the  cases  where  girls  are  shipped  from  the 
London  "breaking  in  ground."  At  least  they 
could  diminish  the  traffic  by  getting  the  evi- 
dence necessary  to  deport  the  girl  when  she 
arrives  in  the  United  States  and  send  her 
back  to  her  home.  Of  course,  the  societies 

85 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

that  watch  over  the  immigrant  do  a  great 
deal  of  good  along  this  line;  but  the  pro- 
curers have  become  wise  as  time  has  passed. 
They  no  longer  send  their  women  in  the 
steerage.  They  are  dressed  well  and  they 
travel  second  class.  Often  a  woman  ally  of 
the  procurer,  fashionably  gowned,  meets 
them  on  the  dock  to  give  a  look  of  regularity 
to  the  story  that  the  girl  has  come  to  serve  as 
maid  or  companion  in  a  well-to-do  family. 

Then  there  should  be  more  cooperation  be- 
tween immigration  officials  and  the  police. 
Time  after  time  I  found  that  when  we  in  the 
police  department  in  New  York  got  on  the 
trail  of  women  being  imported,  and  reported 
the  facts  to  the  officials  at  Ellis  Island,  the 
women  would  get  into  the  country  in  some 
mysterious  way  despite  our  efforts.  The 
hearing  would  be  set  for  one  day,  and  would 
be  held  sometime  previous  without  the  Po- 
lice Department  being  notified,  or  some  one 
of  a  dozen  other  ruses  would  be  used. 
86 


THE  GIRL  THAT  DISAPPEARS 

And  don't  you  see,  my  reader,  this  all 
comes  back  to  you.  These  things  would  not 
be  possible  if  it  were  not  for  the  hypocrisy 
that  surrounds  the  social  evil  with  secrecy.  If 
you  become  alive  in  the  situation  mayors  will 
have  to  support  their  chiefs  of  police,  and  I 
don't  think  there  is  a  head  of  a  police  depart- 
ment in  the  United  States  who  would  not  re- 
joice in  an  opportunity  to  do  his  share  to 
crush  the  evil.  When  you  look  at  it  this  way, 
when  you  see  the  thing  as  I  do,  it  is  not  a 
problem.  It  is  only  a  question:  Do  you 
want  to  face  this  phase  of  our  life  as  a  fact, 
see  it  handled  as  a  fact,  frankly  and  openly, 
and  remedied  as  a  fact? 


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